Vocal Mic Bleed
 

How do you guys go about cutting out the guitar bleeding into the vocal mic? Whether I'm recording with an acoustic or electric, I always have to go back and re-record the vocals. That can get frustrating cuz my best performances come out when I'm playing along w the guitar.



Waves makes a plug called Primary Source Expander that seems like it's specifically made for this. I'm gonna demo it, but I'm guessing I already a plug for this that I've just overlooked.



Thanks.

Re: Vocal Mic Bleed
 

A plugin is not where I would be looking.

What vocal mic?

Electric guitar... iso cab, or amp in whole separate room, or cab emulator/direct out box, or just a load/attenuator box to quiet the amp, or guitar amp processor, or plugin... so many choices.

Accoustic guitar... what mics? You can look for more directional ones and/or just live with some level of bleed.

Re: Vocal Mic Bleed
 

This is very difficult to do. The best way is with both vocal and guitar being mic'd up with figure 8 pattern microphones and aiming the null of each at the "other" source. My solution is to let the performer do a pass where they sing and play, with a count of some kind. Then I have them do a pass of just playing guitar(while listening to the scratch track). Then I have them sing over the fresh(clean) guitar track.

Re: Vocal Mic Bleed
 

Unfortunately I have a pathetic mic locker.. a pair of MCA SP1's and a sm57.


I also forgot to mention that the electric is going DI, so it's just the guitar itself that I'm contending with; no amp.


Like I mentioned earlier, I always thought a gate fixed this, but no matter how high I set the threshold the guitar remains.

Re: Vocal Mic Bleed
 

Another thing to consider is that compression on the vocal mic is going to make it worse. So don't over-compress the vocal mic.

Re: Vocal Mic Bleed
 

Well, it would be cumbersome, but some kind of microphone shield could be placed below the mic to block sound from the guitar. If you're recording yourself, you can probably find a way to make that work(I couldn't do that with a paying client):o